The Anniversary of The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek

15 Mar 2004

John Blundell's article in The Wall Street Journal Europe

60 years ago today, F.A.Hayek, the Austrian Economist recruited by the LSE, published his manifesto for an open society. "The Road to Serfdom," written at night often while acting as a war-time Cambridge fire warden,

became a publishing sensation.

For a courtly and gentle person Hayek was

remarkable in the ferocity of his warnings about the socialist ideas that had apparently engulfed everyone's perceptions. He, and his publishers, anticipated modest sales. In any case, war-time paper rationing allowed it to be printed only in small runs.

"The Road to Serfdom" was a book written for intellectuals, not a popular manifesto.

But a succession of events soon after publication turned

it into a popular phenomenon. First, it picked up so many favorable reviews that it soon became known as the book nobody could get because as quickly as another imprint rolled off the presses it vanished.